


Caged

by Shadowmun



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:14:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27041821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowmun/pseuds/Shadowmun
Summary: Booker in a cage. Or is he?
Comments: 4
Kudos: 29





	Caged

**Author's Note:**

> Seriously, I apologize, this is so much thinking, so little action, I am ashamed.... But still: it's probably ok... ish.  
> Not betaread, non-native.  
> constructive critiscism wanted.
> 
> Minor edits done.

A staccato of gunshots hits his body, bites through the Kevlar of the armor, pierces the skin and stabs deeply. The pain is immediate, breathtaking. By now, he should be used to dying. He isn’t. It would be faster, easier, to let go and come back, once the pain is done, but he can’t. Urges his body to go on, move, breathe, live. To fight back.

Someone goes down next to him, stays, another… three, four… one of them is his own, he isn’t sure which… the darkness embraces him, soothes him. He wants to stay, just for a minute, but reality pulls him back. Fast. Pain hits with the force of a speeding car. Bullets are pushed out, clink to the floor. Hands twitch, search for guns and triggers. Eyes start working again, showing the blood-stained bodies about to rise again. One, two, three, four. A count of soldiers, a count of seconds, until fighting readiness.

One, two, three, four… GO. A whirl of guns and swords, an axe. Of blood and gore, of bodies hitting the ground. A well-oiled machine with no superfluous parts, every move measured, every second counted. Cooperation far beyond the point of automatic response…

-

Booker comes to, shivering. Guilt sweeps over him. Again. Tonight, it’s only the fight, not the lab, which is a blessing. He can handle the fight. The lab always leaves him a wreckage. Still shaking, he stands up, stumbles over to the cell door, caresses it with his fingertips… It doesn’t change. Of course not. Hard to decide, which is the stronger cage, the worse prison. The place, Quynh has put him in or the guilt, he has put himself in. It really doesn’t matter; he has fucked up and he is most certainly most completely fucked. Truly fucked.

He has tried everything. Hitting his fists bloody, squeezing limbs through every possible crease, dying, healing, he just won’t come out.

-

“Now, be a well-behaved little immortal, Booker.” Quynh isn’t patient… One would think different, after 500 years but she is done with waiting. Booker doesn’t want to talk. Doesn’t want to tell her about the others. Not while he doesn’t know, what she is to do with the knowledge. She has been kind enough, apart from the locking up and the disrespect. But that does not mean, it will stay that way. He suspects, she will lose her temper very soon.

Funny that, though, he wishes, she would. It would be so much easier. If she beat him up, if she tortured him, instead of just asking, again and again. Some pain, some suffering, just to distract him from what a miserable shit he really is. Welcome Nicky’s martyr complex… He chuckles about the thought and… suddenly… he tells her… Tells her, how Nicky always puts himself in dangers path to save them. How he is calm and steady like a rock to build on. She smiles, listens, stops urging him on, lets him ponder in the memories.

-

One. “Booker, it’s not about, what life gives you… It’s about what you choose to value.” Easy of Nicky to say, isn’t it? Life has presented him with one thing to make him whole again, once he was broken from rising from death. Life has offered.

But it isn’t fair. If he is being honest. Nicky takes interest. The small pup abandoned beside the road, the abused girl around the corner, the little boy without a father. The hungry, the poor, the beaten. Nicky carries their burden without complaint and deals out redemption, when he thinks it necessary.

As he does for Booker. He has given up on taking bottles out of his hand, but he still watches, he never flinches. Waits. For him to come back to himself. To decide he is done with self-pity and finally ready for help.

-

“Very good, Booker. Now someone else…” He snorts unhappy, right at her. Does she realize, how precious this knowledge is? That Nicky hasn’t given up on him? That he is still caring? Even, when they are apart? Even after this betrayal? Even now? He didn’t say, didn’t contact him, before Quynh hauled him away, but the way Nile asked about his well-being in the short text exchanges he had with her, were so tainted with the questions, Nicky might have asked her. “Does he eat enough? Is it day or night, when he answers? Is he sober?” And Nile would smile and be her usual optimistic self, easing Nicky’s worries, smiling, lighting up the room. Oh, how he hopes, she can keep that. It will carry on through her eternity.

\--

Two. “No man left behind, you said…”

She nods and smiles. “You tried to safe them. In the end, you got it right, that’s enough for me.” And then she hugs him, so tight, he might burst, but it’s just right, he feels safe, just for a moment. “You should stop drinking though. And get help, you know?”

He laughs, putting some distance between them, so he can mimic the introduction to a therapist. “Good day, sir… or mam, I am a 200-year-old immortal with survivor’s guilt…”

Her laughter is fresh and freeing and warm and great. It’s invigorating and contagious. He just can’t help himself to join her. Even when Andy is scowling over there…

\--

Andy – This hurts. Even when he doesn’t utter her name, Quynh knows. He is an open book, he thinks. An open wound, more like… Andy. “Tell me about her!” she orders him, soft but adamant. He shakes his head, bites his tongue, tenses, but he can’t forget. Andy… who he will probably never, ever, ever see again… the one constant in his life, the one person, who fully understood the feeling of loss… And now he will have to do without her…

\---

Three. With some small move of her head, she passes the bottle. Not a woman of many words. The smile accompanying the vodka isn’t happy, isn’t sad either. Just… there. They drink in silence, each reminiscing their own dead and lost. Both buried in unforgiven guilt and dragged along sadness, both alone. Both worried beyond everything, they will lose some more… Because Joe wasn’t at the meeting point. Nicky is after him, figuring out what went wrong; they would never be able to stop him. All they can do is waiting, relying on Nicky being rational. Which, ironically, usually works out. It wouldn’t, if it was Joe. Joe would go in head first, chances be damned.

\---

Joe… Another open wound… His laughter, his comradery… His voice, his hands, his temper, his… everything. Joe always in full, Joe always sharing. Everything. Shouting, when his team is losing on football (soccer, for Nile), laughing, when it’s Nicky, losing some childish bet, jabbing at Booker after a well-placed quip.

\----

Four. A laughter as big as the man it stems from bellows through the room. “Booker!”

With a matching smile he lets himself get pulled into an embrace, warm and full, dangerously tempting. Nicky stands aside, not jealous in the least. Let’s them have their moment, while Joe pulls him aside, after a year of separation. “Look, I have to show you.” They go, alone, and Booker basks in the warm feeling of sharing with Joe. He has acquired some new sport memorabilia or arts or something. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is, he wants to show it to Booker. So badly, he abandons even a proper welcome. It’s great. They are mates. They share something, Joe does have with no one else. Not even with his saintly shadow.

Joe was always closest. The first to smile… And now, most certainly the last to forgive. That hurts. The fun part is: it does not hurt, because he is gone, but because Booker hurt him so deeply, he may never come back. How could he? How could he do that to them? And not even get something. In hindsight, it was obvious, he wouldn’t. How could he be so blind? He rages, he cries, he…

\----

One. Two. Three. Four.

Quynh interrupts. “Tell me about the last one.” The… oh… yes…

\-----

Five. Flashes of pain, of rage, of desperation. Of salvation. May his dreams of her be nightmares, there is one thing, redeeming them. In return, she may receive his reality. See flashes of the love they share, see Nicky and Joe, embracing, loving, living. See Andy. Andy, still grieving, still going on, saving the world, fighting… As fierce, as strong, as beautiful as ever. Love found and lost, and maybe found again? Some day?

\-----

And now… come save me.

\------

The cell door is open. Was open all the time. The bottom of a bottle. Death. Guilt. He leaves them behind. To save her, him. Them. All. Six.


End file.
